All the Missing Girls(46)

I was losing them, and I couldn’t. I had to know.

The new cop from State, staying at the motel in town? Someone else? Annaleise?

Find them. Find answers.

I sneaked through the yard like I used to when I was a kid, keeping silent and to the shadows until I reached the tree line. I saw the flashlight bobbing periodically in the distance, and I sprinted toward it until I got too close. I kept my own light off. The moon was enough for my footing, or maybe that was my memory.

But the light wasn’t moving toward Annaleise’s place anymore, or my own. It was heading away. Backtracking. Moving sure--footedly and with purpose through the forest. Toward a hiding spot, maybe. Or a car on the other end.

We’d been moving for at least half an hour, and a sliver of panic had wedged itself inside my chest. I was at the disadvantage, I was alone, I was unarmed, unprotected—with no phone, or map, or GPS. My options were to keep following the flashlight or stop with no sense of where I was.

And yet.

I had the sense that I knew where we were heading. Not from the direction but from the timing. I’d taken this trek before at night.

But it wasn’t until we reached the clearing that I was sure. Big open space set back from the road. Small narrow path, cordoned off, leading to the caverns. I stayed in the woods, watching the flashlight. Eventually another light appeared on the path, and I willed it closer until it shone on the person I was following.

For a moment I think I expected to see skinny arms and blond hair and huge eyes; pale skin and dirty clothes. Maybe it was nothing but hope, but there it was: I expected to see Annaleise.

But it was a boy. A teenager. Her brother. And the person with him was a tall girl with dark hair, an arm held up to shield her eyes. “God, you’re blinding me, *.”

“Where’s David?”

“Bringing the drinks. Carly’s in the car. She doesn’t like it out here when it’s just us. Says it’s not safe.” The girl paused. “Any word about your sister?”

“Nah,” he said, lowering the flashlight.

“I’m sorry, Bryce,” she said.

Bryce. Right. He didn’t look particularly shaken up by the fact that his sister was missing. And they didn’t look the same—not like Daniel and I used to. Bryce was stocky, had inherited his father’s square jaw and broad shoulders.

“Could still turn up,” he said.

Nine days, and that was all he could say. I’d find it suspicious if I didn’t already know his type—part of a generation of kids expecting everything handed to them: the missing people, returned. The mystery, solved for them. Ten years ago, we’d torn these woods to pieces. We’d followed the cops to the places they searched, and we’d searched the places they didn’t. But not these kids. Apparently, they could just shrug it off, give their condolences, wait for the beer to arrive.

Maybe it was that Annaleise wasn’t theirs. A little too old, she’d already left, gone to college, come back. She didn’t belong to them or to us. Lost in the gap with no one to seek her out.

I heard an engine and shrank away from the flashlights and headlights. “There he is,” the girl said. “Come on, the woods creep me out. My brother used to tell me there was a monster.”

Bryce nodded and followed her.

If you let yourself get swept away in legend, let it become more than story, then it’s not such a stretch to imagine Corinne disappearing without a trace. It happens all the time, all across the country, especially in the woods, in the middle of the night. And if Corinne did, then so could Annaleise.

Wasn’t a stretch to imagine a monster, even. Watching and waiting and making you do things. Breathing in the lick of smoke as the teenagers made a fire. Watching them fall all over each other in a heap of beautiful limbs. Feeling the cold dirt settle under its nails as it waited, listening to the theories and the stories and the bullshit. Waiting until they fell asleep so it could creep back to the caverns and see what—if any—secrets they had to offer.

It’s not so hard. From where they were sitting, there was something doing the same, and they had no idea.

Right then I was the monster.





The Day Before





DAY 9

I had my back pressed against the bedroom wall, ear to the open window, like a kid eavesdropping on the conversation outside. Daniel trying to send the police away, to stop them from dragging us into yet another investigation.

Stay out of it, he’d said to me, and he was right.

I’d already given my statement to Officer Fraize, useless as it must’ve been. Did you see anything in the woods? Hear anything that night? Anything at all?

No sir, no sir, no sir.

I had no relationship with Annaleise. There was nothing on paper tying us to each other, except in that hypothetical box in the police station from ten years ago, and that was just a corroboration of alibi. And yet here was a new cop out front, asking to speak with me.

His voice was gravelly but tentative. Careful. “If I could just ask her a few quick questions about her relationship with Tyler Ellison . . .”

And there it was. Tyler. Tyler ties to me and me to Daniel. Suddenly, the whole knotted mess of us is sucked down, prodded and pried until we reveal something unintentional. Something used to break apart the other. Hannah Pardot was an expert at that. This guy, not so much. He was tripping over Daniel, or Daniel was overpowering him. Either way, this cop wasn’t getting in to see me.